Follett Aspen SIS

Vorteile

Fully enterprise-grade software, Aspen was the only product that could scale to support the 50+ school districts and hundreds of thousands of students we are running on our managed SIS service. It has a broad and deep range of functionality that covers almost every need at the school and school district level, while also providing the local capabilities required to support individual students, teachers, parents, counselors and administrators. The solution is also very flexible, allowing a high degree of customization and personalization straight out of the box.

From a technology standpoint, Aspen is based on Microsoft SQL Server and .NET technology with a browser-only UI, so Aspen is built for and fully compliant with a multitude of web and cloud environments. The modularity of the design makes Aspen the easiest product to set up and manage while still allowing for localization, integration, reporting, etc. The other key issue for us was security and data privacy, where we used Aspen combined with AD to enable permissions for data access only on a very strict need-to-know basis as required by federal law.

From a company standpoint, with over 600,000 active students to support, stability is very important to us. Follett Software is part of Follett Inc. which is a $4B company with 140 year history dedicated to education, so these guys aren't going anywhere! In the very fragmented education software space, that was very important as we were making a 10+ year commitment.

Vorteile

The software is easy to use and is comprehensive for educators.

Nachteile

Running reports is a lengthy process and you have to create "filters" to save common run reports. I wish this was an easier process.

Vorteile

I can set up a class list but so can google.

Nachteile

Setting up comments doesn't allow for flooding of comments without having to go in to each individual student to change the name and pronoun. Many teachers teach literally hundreds of students a day and this is asinine. Furthermore, the inability to create a better organized comment bank that searches with efficiency should not be complicated but this system is terrible and again wastes valuable time. Having to hit "post" and save as often as possible is also absolutely frustrating. I would never buy this product or use it. Teachers have much more important things to do than to waste time on all its inefficiencies.

Vorteile

Aspen plus is a very powerful tool for the process industry for making the simulation and modelling it provides a wide variety of equipment and tool for making the proper simulation and also we can find process parameters for binary and single components and also we can do optimization and sensitivity analysis for better process performance.

Nachteile

Sometimes it takes a long time to run a simulation apart form that everything is fine about this platform

Vorteile

I like that we can create our own field sets so that we can search by First name and even parents names.
I also like how easy it is to download info into excel spreadsheets..
I love being able to download class lists into WORD documents so I can create quick tally sheets..

Nachteile

The most basic function that is missing is the fact that attendance doesn’t communicate with the Bus Manifests and remove and/or add students as their attendance info updates through the day. The other missing element is the option to create a bus EXEMPTION list that REMOVES students who are on pick up that day. Having to print 18 bus lists and manually cross out students and then add or remove additional students throughout the day as records change is tedious, time consuming and far too risky for error.. thereby threatening the safety of children if mistakes are made.. If we had these two basic functions we would be more successful! 🥰

Vorteile

I like the reports we can run. Unofficial and official transcripts are VERY quick to run and pop up for individual and even bulk students. I appreciate we can make our own filters.

Nachteile

There is not a "class rank" report. this makes it difficult to create a class rank list.

Vorteile

Ability to email all student from inside the portal.

Nachteile

* Attendance set up is painful. Say a student is not there, you mark them absent. Click submit. Then they show up. As a teacher you must now mark them present, click submit. Wait for the page to reload. Mark them tardy, click submit. Then to add to that you may only submit 3 changes per reload before the system produces an error. Am I being tortured.
* Lets talk about the assignments and gradebook. Naming assignments requires you to create "GB Column Name" which is limited to 10 characters long and must be unique. This is just lazy programming. Why can't we have an unlimited character string.
* Most other gradebook software, even the ones that are FREE allow the user to upload grade from a spreadsheet or csv file. Not Aspen Follett.
* Do you like to write comments such as marking an assignment that was turned in late, or incomplete, or completed with one-on-one assistance from an aid? You cannot do this by simply clicking a checkbox. You must instead physically type this as a comment after opening each student's individual assignment record and saving and reloading the next screen.
*Student experience is almost as bad as the teacher experience. Students must go thru multiple screens of navigation (up to 13 screen reloads) in order to view the assignments and grades for their 8th period class.

Vorteile

I honestly can't think of one and that is really sad.

Nachteile

This is the most user unfriendly application I've ever had to use as a professional. Simple tasks require a series of clicks and refreshes and a basic task that should be easy, such as creating a printable roster is unbelievable. No one has figured out how to do this after almost two years of use. It's not appealing to look at, the fields to enter assignment information are far too small (limit the user to 8 or 9 characters), and it's just a poor platform. If this were free, it would still be too much money because the amount of time that goes into learning simple tasks that should be no-brainers in 2020 are far to involved. The running rumor is that someone high up in CPS must have a personal or business relationship with an ASPEN Developer.

Vorteile

Absolutely nothing. This is simply the most user unfriendly product I have ever used.

Nachteile

It is difficult to do anything. It is glitchy. Maybe if you love tech, you can use it. I am just a teacher and spend far too much time figuring things out on this program while I should be doing productive things.

Vorteile

The idea of having more information and functionality

Nachteile

It is extremely hard to use and has many glitches. Even the simple act of finding a student’s schedule requires multiple menus and is very glitchy. For example, the only way to get the complete schedule is to press the back browser several times.

When trying to find a student, the search field of the entire school is broken down by 100 or so students. We have over 1,000 students. I have to guess which field the student is in before I am able to search.

When I print out student information (profile, schedule, etc.) the print out is not aligned, and looks disorganized.

Vorteile

Su amigable interfaz, ayuda a que el proceso de recopilacion y cruce de datos sea mas facil a la hora de descargar informacion.

Nachteile

la asistencia al cliente en el momento de inconvenientes como fallos en el sistema.

Vorteile

The only thing I like about using Aspen is that I've just gotten used to it.

Nachteile

I feel that Aspen for entering student grades is a bit clunky and could be updated to make it easier for the teachers. Maybe have less buttons to press especially when submitting grades!

Vorteile

Um...it's named after a tree that's kinda pretty?

Nachteile

I now have to use this for attendance and report cards. The attendance part is OK despite a couple of glitches, but the report card writing program is the worst I've seen in 20 years of teaching. How can it be worse than what I was using 20 years ago? I thought technology and programming were constantly being updated and improved over time. How can this product exist now? How much cheaper was this compared to the competition? This is the most user-unfriendly program ever.

Vorteile

Aspen has been around for a long time. It does amazing calculations in the background that would be impossible to do by hand. The answers may actually mean something if you have the expertise to ask the right questions.

Nachteile

It is very complex. The user interface is dated. It is still using Fortran 77 as the basis for the programming. The answers you get are very dependent on the inputs you provide and the calculation methods you select. The user must be knowledgeable in the process.

Vorteile

It is very evident that Follett Aspen cares about their customers and meetings their needs. I love that I can easily configure Aspen to meet the needs of my district initiatives.

Nachteile

Aspen is so extensive. It does have any thing that I don’t like.

Vorteile

So far, I have not found any. We are being forced to quickly learn this new software with no extra time to do so.

Nachteile

It is not user friendly. They launched it too quickly and did not give us enough time to learn it. The old software (Trillium) did the job for many many years and we had ZERO issues with it. Since ASPEN, we have run into MANY MANY issues that had made our job as teachers harder.

Vorteile

There is nothing to endorse about this software.

Nachteile

This software is not ready for prime time. It has been an embarrassment as a corporate roll out. Customer service is garbage. Nothing works. Basic functionality like printing report cards - nope.
Integrations with other software products - all broke.
Do not waste tax payer dollars on this product.

Vorteile

it contains a lot of useful information and is easily accessible

Nachteile

some functions are not user friendly, takes too much time to find information

Vorteile

Les contacts et les pei facile à trouver

Nachteile

Pas prêt pour un système francophone
L’option résultat trop compliqué. Je passe plus de temps à entrer des données. Je suis une enseignante pas une employée de bureaux

Vorteile

I loved the functionality and ease of use most about this software.

Nachteile

No cons to this software. I have no cons.